fall

Alyosha emerged from the dream transformed. Something burned in his heart, something suddenly filled him almost painfully, tears of rapture nearly burst from his soul. ...Over him the heavenly dome, full of quiet, shining stars, hung boundlessly. From the zenith to the horizon the still-dim Milky Way stretched its double strand. Night, fresh and quiet, almost unstirring, enveloped the earth. The silence of the earth seemed to merge with the silence of heavens, the mystery of the earth touched the mystery of the stars. ...Alyosha felt clearly and almost tangibly something as firm and immovable as the heavenly vault descend into his soul. ...Never in his life would he forget that moment.

If the eyes are the windows of the soul, then the voice is the window opened up and the sound of the soul coming out.

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

The experience of transcendence occurs within the nature of things -- our nature. A small mustard-seed grows into a tree big enough for birds to come and roost in its branches. To try to make it grow faster or slower would be absurd and counterproductive. It is the same when we experience the growth of Divine Love in our hearts as we let the husk of the ego drop away and like seed we die to self that we may fulfill the destiny that is our true meaning, that the potential of life within us may come to fruition.

The soul of each one of us has its destination, and that is the Divine Heart. What is true of each of us is true of all the world. Walt Whitman in his strong, urgent way cries: "One thought ever at the fore, that in the Divine Ship, the world breasting time and space, all peoples of the globe together sail, sail the same voyage, are bound to the same destination." Some such thought as this is surely necessary for the bare subsistence of a soul, for our souls cannot live without the sense of destination.

Sometimes in your life you will go on a journey. It will be the longest journey you have ever taken. It is the journey to find yourself.

The journey itself is home.

I can feel at the very centre of my being the spark which connects one to the ultimate mystery, the mystery which no one will ever unfold on this side of the grave. All one can do in this life is to embark on that journey to the centre, where the immanent God dwells, and fight to continue that journey no matter how many obstacles are thrust in one's path. I know that in order to serve the mysterious transcendent God to the best of my ability I must continually work to align myself with the immanent God, the God within; I must continually strive to release the blueprint of my personality and become the individual God created me to be.

Spirituality is an inner fire, a mystical sustenance that feeds our souls. The mystical journey drives us into ourselves to a sacred flame at our center.

It is because of our wounds, our pain and our sadness, that we turn from the outer world and trace the thread of our own darkness back to its source. It leads us through the barriers of pain to the place of our own healing. But in the very process of making this journey the light of consciousness which we carry with us transforms our darkness. The individual who arrives at the source is very different from the person who set out upon the quest. During the course of this journey we have to accept and integrate what we find within us -- our pain and our anger and all the many forms our darkness has taken. ... We will have to accept ourselves as we really are. This then will be the chalice into which the Divine Wine can be poured.

We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles, but the grace to transform them.